Prior to 2020, Franciscan Health, a health system based in Mishawaka, Indiana, conducted a number of telemedicine visits throughout the organization. Aside from some telemedicine and behavioral health virtual care, there aren’t any strong programs for patients to engage with Franciscan Alliance providers through telemedicine.
PROBLEM
As of February 2020, a number of specialties are in the process of requiring telehealth technologies, and some of them, such as urgent care, are already in beta. Everything changed in March 2020 when COVID-19 arrived.
The state of emergency and stay-at-home orders have introduced a need to keep at-risk patients out of healthcare facilities and stay at home whenever possible. Additionally, new challenges include caring for COVID-19 patients, maintaining personal protective equipment, and protecting the health of the healthcare team itself.
Hospital outpatient departments prioritize caring for patients at home rather than taking them to the clinic.
SUGGESTIONS
“As we have weathered the pandemic, these resources are still being used to reach our patients,” said Craig Miller, administrative director of ambulance services at the Franciscan Alliance. “Through the use of remote patient monitoring and virtual visits, we are able to connect patients with doctors in new areas.
He continued: “The use of our virtual visits has now shifted to some of our consultant physicians, who can provide hospital consultations from their home facility. “Given the ongoing staffing and recruitment challenges, this is a valuable tool for our doctors and providers to reach patients at other hospitals in the network.”
The health system went with the provider Teladoc Health. Telehealth technology is fully integrated with the provider organization’s Epic EHR and MyChart patient portals through context-aware linkage to simplify provider workflow and patient, at the same time with Canto for provider-to-provider consultation.
“This allows Franciscan Health to automatically book appointments, check-in, and pay outpatients during visits,” explains Miller. “Franciscan Health has chosen to use the iPad for inpatient consultations and examinations.
He continued: “Franciscan Health uses Teladoc Health’s virtual waiting room functionality to enable urgent care, corporate, occupational health and travel medicine patients to conduct virtual visits. “This technology also allows diabetes education and obesity support groups to visit as a group. Teladoc Health is very helpful in supporting education and training.”
Franciscan Health conducted phased training for the operations team, suppliers and staff, technology and patients. In addition to safely delivering patient care, the ability to capture revenue growth is essential, he added.
“Franciscan Health has established an invoicing, coding and compliance team and developed a payer pathway to ensure that clinicians are not required to understand the entire process,” said Miller. new reimbursement process and new telemedicine technology”.
He continued: “Many of these ideas about how to use care wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the FCC funding grant we receive and the pandemic. “Using many of the processes and workflows from COVID, we’ve adapted those workflows in our routine care.”
MARKET
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MEET CHALLENGES ONLY
Franciscan Health uses telehealth technology in many ways to help deliver high-quality care to patients throughout the organization. The pandemic allows groups to think differently and change the way care is delivered to better support patients.
“Franciscan has increased remote monitoring of patients, including COVID patients who have visited the emergency department, providing additional tools and support to help them feel comfortable recovering in their own homes,” explains Miller. mine”.
“From there, Franciscan builds on that work to identify opportunities to better connect patients with care teams throughout the continuum of care, including virtual multidisciplinary care rounds, timely virtual consultations, and more. Time with experts and focus on developing a human-centered remote patient monitoring program that will provide additional support and care to patients with chronic conditions,” he added.
RESULT
Franciscan Health has achieved some impressive results in the field of telemedicine, including:
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Over 540,000 virtual visits as of March 2020
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Over 8,500 weekly visits
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More than 500 patients signed up for COVID-19 remote patient monitoring
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Last month, over 540 providers completed at least one virtual visit
USE FCC AWARD FUNDS
The FCC’s telehealth funding program awarded Franciscan Health $747,665.
“The FCC telehealth award has been very helpful in providing resource dollars for our telemedicine program,” Miller noted. “Without this support, we would not be able to provide resources and products to our patients in emergency facilities, home healthcare, and hospitals.
“These funds were used to purchase equipment and licenses for our remote patient monitoring program as well as for the Epic and Teladoc virtual programs,” he concluded. “These funds have expanded the program and have helped support patients throughout the pandemic through the ability to monitor vitals and provide video screening technology.”
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